At MediaTrust I am the “social media guy.” There are still factions of my company that don’t get what it is I do exactly. Social media is not an exact science and trying to explain it to someone that doesn’t understand services like Facebook or Twitter is going to have a hard time wrapping their mind around the value of things like podcasts and blogs. This applies to pretty much every company doing business today. For the past few years, I have been banging the drum on the importance of having a corporate blog strategy to everyone I meet. Yesterday Idris Mootee wrote a post that pretty much EXACTLY sums up what I have been trying to impress on people. He lists four key points that are key to your success:

1. You need credibility

2. You need to have a distinct perspective

3. Timeliness of relevant content

4. Balancing the corporate legal and strategic risks of posting vs. not posting

Check out his blog for more detail on each, but these are the bullet points. A successful blog has to have genuine intent. It has to be real, and it has to offer something other than the “me too” bandwagon-jumping I see too many companies fall prey to.

One final nugget of information I’d offer is don’t expect to make money off your corporate blog directly. I know, your business has enough cost centers, it doesn’t need another one, right? Wrong! If you follow the tips above and you put real effort forth, the amount of positive traction you will gain for your brand will be well worth it. Customers want to feel a connection to the companies they do business with. Offering a genuine perspective and a mechanism for your customers to provide feedback will be worth it’s weight in gold.

I reference Robert Scoble a lot on this blog. After all, he is a pioneer in this space and if you want to know which way the wind is blowing in social media, you BETTER know what he’s up to. That being said, I’ve been following his new gig over at Fast Company pretty closely. Obviously Fast Company is a well-respected brand in traditional business circles, but their foray into social media is fairly new. Bringing Scoble into the mix was a move that has been watched by a lot of people.

Scoble produces several shows for them. The one I’m focusing on for the purpose of this article is Workfast TV with his co-host Shel Israel. The premise of the show is a familiar format - Robert and Shel start off with some back and forth banter about what they did this past week, then they introduce their guest and proceed to have a discussion for the next 30 minutes or so.

It’s a trainwreck. First off, the vibe of the show is totally off. You have Scoble as the only one dressed in a suit and tie, while the rest are dressed more casually. Additionally his laptop is covered in tech stickers which totally negates any business look he’s trying to create. Second, the banter between Israel and Scoble is painfully hard to watch. Instead of being friends, you’d swear they met 5 minutes before the show. Attempts at jokes fall flat and are awkwardly laughed off. As a viewer it is uncomfortable to watch. Finally, the format is flawed. They sit around a table with the guest. While they’re bantering back and forth, the guest is sitting there uncomfortably wondering what to do with themselves. By the time they start referring to the guest in the third person, you start to cringe.

On a positive note, the production values are top-notch.

Ok, I know this was a very long-winded way to get to my point, but it was necessary for context. I posted a condensed and gentler version of the above critique in the comments of Workfast TV a couple of days ago. Guess what? The comment was deleted. Then, I started to see the bulk of the other users in the thread complaining that their comments had been deleted for being critical. Fast Company then chimed in… (Wait, I see they have now deleted their initial comments defending the deletion of user comments). So not only are they deleting unfavorable comments from users, they have seen fit to pull their initial defense of doing so. Wow.

That last piece just really cements my argument. Fast Company doesn’t get what social media is about. They thought that hiring Scoble would bring them instant audience and credibility - and it did. But now that is eroding quickly. After all, one of Scoble’s key mantras is that companies should be engaged with their consumers on the web. Fast Company has essentially thrown that way of thinking out the window.

I realize that Scoble and Israel have little or no say in Fast Company’s practices. I also understand that business is business, and they have to put food on the table. However, how do you build your career as a transparent blogger, then sit back and watch your personal brand be tarnished by a company using tactics that are the antithesis of your view of social media ? I reached out to Scoble on Twitter and Israel on his blog, and as of this posting there was no response from either of them. Are their hands tied? Does their silence mean they condone it?

I applaud companies for taking the leap and putting some money into the social web. The benefits can be tremendous for your traffic and your brand. But, you have to be willing to have a genuine conversation. You can’t put out a show about how companies are effectively using the web 2.0 world to their benefit, then turn around and censor unflattering feedback. Now, before Fast Company removed their corporate comment yesterday, they stated that they only removed negative attacks and said they were open to critiques of the show. That’s complete BS because my comment was deleted and it was a genuine piece of constructive feedback. Where is the two-way dialog in that example? Amazingly, Fast Company is actually going to be worse off in the web 2.0 space than they were before they started their social media initiatives. Instead of this being a brand-building effort, it’s now turning into brand repair.

What should you take away from Fast Company’s mistake?

1. Don’t jump into emerging media unless you really want to engage your customers in an open dialog.

2. Welcome and encourage genuine feedback in your forums and blogs. Don’t delete something because it doesn’t fit with your tightly-controlled marketing message.

3. Listen to feedback. Most of it is genuine, and although it may be painful to read, you may be able to learn from it and make something in your organization better.

4. Reward feedback, whether it’s negative or positive, by engaging participators with a response.

Scoble and Israel know these things. I bet they tell this stuff to companies everyday when they interview them. So is it not bizarre that they would work for a company that so clearly seems to hold an opposing view?

Like many people, I’ve become frustrated with Twitter’s downtime. The fact that “Fail Whale” has become part of the social media vernacular is proof-positive and certainly not the type of brand awareness that Twitter wants. Despite it’s unreliability, Twitter has become part of our daily life. What else is there?

You can’t swing a dead cat in the blogosphere these days without hitting a post touting the benefits of Friendfeed. Scoble’s been using it for months. Now Calacanis is pushing it almost as much as Mahalo. I decided to see what the fuss was about.

First, the interface is much cleaner than Twitter. The more people you follow on Twitter, the harder it becomes to actually make sense of the information coming through. The noise to signal ratio goes way up. Unless you use a service like Summize, you easily miss content aimed at you. Friendfeed has threaded conversations. The ability to reply and comment in an orderly, easy-to-read way is huge.

Next, the process of following people on Twitter is tedious and time-consuming. Friendfeed integrates with your facebook account so the people you are friends with on facebook automatically become part of your Friendfeed network. Friendfeed also integrates your blog, YouTube, SumbleUpon, and yes, even your Twitter account.

The final feather in Friendfeed’s cap is it’s reliability. By many estimates they have half the users and traffic that Twitter has, and so far, haven’t had any of the scalability problems that have plagued Twitter since their inception. I’m not an IT guy and have no idea what it takes to keep a site like Twitter stable. BUT, I do know that they are sitting on a goldmine. The only thing killing them is their crappy infrastructure. Why on earth wouldn’t you make this your top priority and hire the right tech team to fix this issue once and for all? I know these things don’t happen overnight, but in 3 or 4 months it’s only gotten worse, not better. What’s the deal?

I haven’t quite rang the death knell for Twitter yet. They were the pioneer in the micro-blogging movement and they have a great brand. That will keep their head above water for a short time, but if they don’t resolve their tech issues soon Friendfeed is going to continue to poach their user base. Then, it will be too late and whale will have permanently failed.

Robert Scoble is talking about how YouTube is going long-form and why it will be more profitable for them and more attractive to advertisers. His argument is that if someone is willing to sit through a 30-minute video online, then they are more engaged and will more likely be customers for advertisers:

Someone who’ll watch a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED. They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video.

Here’s why: long videos are a filter. Only the most passionate and most interested people online will watch such a video. Those who aren’t interested wouldn’t even consider watching a long video.

It’s a nice theory, but I don’t buy it. First, I believe that a large chunk of people that consume online video do so at work. That environment allows you to watch a 2-5 minute video and then get back to what you are doing. It also allows for more interruptions, while still being able to finish the video. How many times are you going to tolerate being interrupted at work by co-workers, phone calls, or email before you throw in the towel on a 30-minute video?

People just don’t watch long-form video on their computer. My own video work has fallen victim to this as well. I’ve done many videos that were 15 minutes long and after watching them with colleagues or with an objective eye, it was clear that people get antsy after 7 or 8 minutes. It made me cut deeper during the editing process and really get to the meat of the content. My productions are better for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is impossible for a long-form video to find an audience online. After all, Scoble does just fine with viewership of his pieces - although it doesn’t hurt to have his brand name and the weight of Fast Company behind him. Additionally, sites like Hulu that archive complete TV shows and movies will find an audience because they are serving up content that already has a traditional media audience of millions. It’s hard enough for unknown prosumer / UGC / pro content to find an audience with short, well-paced pieces. I believe that becomes an even bigger challenge when the content starts getting into the 30-minute range.

The other side effect I see of YouTube allowing video longer than 10 minutes is increased piracy. They can barely police their network efficiently now with a 10-minute limit. This opens up their network to people adding complete TV shows or movies. That means their copyright department is going to be working lots of overtime.

Advertisers want engagement. We know that. To me, that is better measured by how many people comment on a video or link to it, rather than making the assumption that committing to watching a longer video makes them a better potential customer.

Today, our pay for performance division, Advaliant, jumps into the arena of social networking. This move is long overdue, but we wanted to make sure we did our homework and positioned ourself in a way that made sense to our affiliates and our advertisers.

Our rollout centers around the idea of micro-blogging; short updates about new offers, news in the affiliate marketing space, and our perspective on the state of the industry. In addition to our presence on larger platforms like Twitter, MySpace, and facebook, we’ll also be participating in communities like Hi5, Bebo, Tumblr, Plurk, Xanga, Mashable, and Pownce. We believe that Advaliant’s journey into social media is more comprehensive than any other pay for performance network’s is to date.

Over the next few months you’ll see lots of great content coming from the Advaliant camp. In addition to our social networking activities across the web, we’ll also be doing some great stuff on our internal web properties including affiliate marketing podcast episodes (see our recent interview with David Taber) and the launch of the Advaliant blog.

We have some of the top minds in the pay for performance space working at Advaliant. Over the next few months I think you’ll come to see that in a big way. The first person I’d like to introduce you to is Larry Markovitz who works in Business Development. He’ll be the voice of Advaliant through our micro-blogging activities and will help steer you towards interesting content in our space. We know you’ll get to appreciate his intelligence, charm, passion, and wit - just like we have here at MediaTrust. If you’d like to start by following him at Twitter, you can do so HERE.

Not a day goes by that I don’t have a conversation with someone about how using Twitter can help their business. Inevitably, the question I always get asked is “how do we make money using things like Twitter or social media as a whole?” I then sigh, take a deep breath, and recite the same speech I’ve given a thousand times before:

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT ABOUT SALES OR DIRECT REVENUE, IT IS ABOUT DRIVING TRAFFIC AND BUILDING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR BRAND!

Comcast has lit up the interwebs lately because of their use of Twitter. I used to be a Comcast customer and getting support from them was near impossible. I have to be honest, I was totally shocked when I heard of their foray into the Twittersphere. I started doing some research and was amazed at the level of personal attention I saw them giving to their customers - in a very public way.

Why is Comcast doing this? My guess is that someone high enough in that organization finally realized the impact that word-of-mouth has on your bottom line. Do a search for “Comcast customer service” and 8 of the 10 first-page entries are all negative postings. There’s even a YouTube video of a Comcast tech sleeping on a customer’s couch (ouch!).

How does this make Comcast money? Well, go back to my all-caps-bolded-sentence above - it doesn’t. In fact, it is costing them a bit to implement this effort. What it is doing in spades is putting their customer service in a favorable light for the first time. People are Twittering their frustrations with the cable company and someone is actually saying “I hear your frustrations and I want to help!” The icing on the cake is that it is being done in public view and people are taking notice. When I Google “Comcast Social Media,” I find a ton of articles talking about how Comcast is embracing change and trying to cut through the clutter of corporate bureaucracy. Clearly their strategy is paying off.

MediaTrust’s Christopher Smith just wrote an article for Website Magazine about the power of using event-driven social media as a way to generate traffic and build brand. Peep this:

Using social media in your marketing execution is about making the most of technology, perspective and interaction, in order to capture the attention of the end-consumer and relate to them in a meaningful and relevant way. This helps build relationships and connections with your brand. If your point of view for the campaign is relevant to your audience it will be engaging, insightful and valuable.

One of things we talk about adnauseam here at Relevantly Speaking is the power of conversation and influence that social media allows you to bring to your customers. For those companies still trying to find the value and how you measure it, this article is a great jumping off point.

I read Brian Oberkirch’s blog LikeItMatters. Yesterday he brought up a point that I have been pondering for quite a while, and it has stuck with me to the point that I felt I should continue the conversation.

Where is Apple in the social web game, and why isn’t .Mac the hub of all things Apple? As Brian points out, to the Mac faithful they have everything already: my phone, my music players, my calendar, my music, my email, my photos, my TV habits…hell, with a little attention recording they have all my browsing habits as well. And yet none of this is tied up in a neat package supporting or enabling my social web.

Of course I have many accounts at many places for many services, and some have even become my best of breed service or social aggregators, but so far I am still required to cast a wide net to establish my ID, my services and my social web. And yet Apple is the big missing piece in the “Hub of my digital life.”

The saddest part of all of this is that I would happily provide my digital life to Apple as a key demographic influencer and help them create that “Hub” for their entry into the social web in a fashion that could be disruptive and, as is typical of Apple, fairly successful. But without a social media presence I don’t even know who to talk to about this. Could you imagine the increase in loyalty and product penetration Apple could gain if they had a social media following the likes of Zappos? I am not suggesting that Steve take time to send Twitter invites to cocktails with Apple fans, similar to the invite I received yesterday from Zappos, but I do know that if I have an idea or a comment I can get to someone at Zappos through their giant footprint of Zappos employees on Twitter - including Tony, the Zappos CEO.

As an aside, I own the domain whatsonyouriPod (dot) com. I purchased it before iTunes had the ability to create shared playlists or iMixes. I spent months trying to speak with someone at Apple about buying the domain from me. All I wanted was some new equipment and the ability to go “yeah, I gave that to Apple.” After months of emails, phone calls and the like, I gave up. I still own the domain btw if anyone wants to contact me about it.

Anyway, back to the point I was trying to make. Apple, where are you? When are you coming to the party? Fashionably late is one thing, but it feels like a party that was tailor-made for you. And if you are throwing your own party, send my invite to csmith at mediatrust dot com. I would love to bend your ear a tick.

Like many of you, I spend a fair portion of my week working in facebook. Building up your network is starting to yield some nice business opportunities. We’ve certainly seen the benefit here at MediaTrust.

The other day I was going through the “people you may know” section and a person in the social media space was suggested to me as a “friend.” I sent a friend request. I’ve gone through these motions many times before. Usually I get a response that I have been confirmed as a friend and both our networks are another person stronger - mutually beneficial I would think. However, something strange happened. I got a response back from this person (we’ll call him Joe Nobody), saying he didn’t recall meeting me in person and that instead of being his “friend,” I could be added as a “fan.”

I found this puzzling for two reasons. First, most of the connections I have on facebook are people I’ve never met in person. We live in a virtual world. Lots of business and personal connections occur through cyber-space. Why was it so shocking that a person you’ve never met in person would request “friend” status on facebook? Second, the notion that I’m not good enough to be your friend, but I can be your fan is absurd. Are you kidding me? This guy was a virtual nobody. I had befriended him because we had mutual career interests. To be rebuffed only served to illustrate how awful he must be at his job in social media. In fact, further review of his “fans” showed only three people. Oops, I guess others were put off by his ego-driven facebook elitism.

Social media is about collaboration. Haven’t we railed against traditional media because they talk at us and not with us? They want to control the conversation and we want a true open dialogue. By offering someone “fan” status on facebook, you’re eliminating the very component that makes social media important. Someone that claims to work in social media should know this. 

I have a network that continues to grow daily. Some of my facebook friends include: Robert Scoble, Arianna Huffington, Veronica Belmont, Andrew Baron, and Tim Bourquin - all giants in the new media space. They all could have asked me to be a fan, but none did. Instead, they graciously accepted my friend request. Joe Nobody chose not to and now he’s being left out of the conversation. In fact, Scoble commented on his blog a few weeks ago in regards to Twitter that it’s not how many people follow you that’s important, it’s how many people you follow that really helps expand your knowledge. He’s right.

This post can be applied to any company thinking about diving into the social media space. Is your goal to control a conversation? Is it to be the most popular person in the room? Or, is your intent genuine? Do you really want to learn from your network and be a part of the discussion? For Joe Nobody, it was clearly about popularity and who he thinks he is. Don’t be a Nobody.

One of the coolest new companies we talked to at SXSW was Utterz. You can send an “utter” in several ways - text, pictures, audio, or video through your mobile phone or computer and have it update in several places (currently I have it distributing my Utterz to my WordPress blog, Tumblr page, Twitter, facebook, and YouTube).

While the concept may have been around for some time, I haven’t seen it executed this well before. Today I was reading a story on CNN and thought that my podcast audience might get a kick out of my take on it. So, I called into the Utterz phone line, and recorded my Utter. Once I was finished, I snapped a picture of the website with my phone and emailed that to go@utterz.com. Because I recorded my Utter and sent the picture within 10 minutes of each other, Utterz paired them together into one post. A short time later the post with flash-embedded audio and an accompanying pic were across all my channels. How cool is that?

The ability that we have to spread information so quickly and with so much rich media is astounding. Imagine capturing that once in a lifetime picture, then recording audio commentary to accompany it and having it spread to the world in minutes. Technology is, and will continue to, change the way news is being reported and information is disseminated. Companies that adopt this new shift will be clearly out in front of the pack.

Look for our video interview with the crew at Utterz on Relevantly Speaking in the next couple weeks.